Blockchains with Melanie Swan
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Blockchains are the distributed ledger technology underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
More broadly, a blockchain is a mechanism for updating truth states in distributed network computing, producing consensus trust and serving as a new form of general computational substrate.
Melanie Swan is a science and technology innovator and philosopher at the MS Futures Group. She founded the Institute for Blockchain Studies, and is the author of Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy.
Questions:
- What is a blockchain?
- How can we generalize the blockchain from bitcoin to other areas?
- How does every user maintain the entire transaction list when that list is gigantic and growing every day?
- How do Stellar and Ripple differ?
- What is Ethereum?
- Is there a social tension between having strong leaders like Vitalik Buterin and a decentralized ideal culture?
- Can you have a blockchain without mining?
- Can the blockchain be used to prevent the artificial intelligence nightmares of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking?
Links:
- Bitcoin/Blockchain Explained (SlideShare)
- Institute for Blockchain Studies
- Melanie Swan bio
- Melanie Swan on Twitter
- Bitcoin/Blockchain Technology Explained (YouTube)
